Jenny Offill Explained

Jenny Offill
Birth Date:14 November 1968
Birth Place:Massachusetts, U.S.
Education:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA)
Genres:Novelist, children's writer, editor
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Jenny Offill (born November 14, 1968) is an American novelist and editor. Her novel Dept. of Speculation was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2014" by The New York Times Book Review.

Early life

Jenny Offill is the only child of two private-school English teachers. She spent her childhood years in various American states, including Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and North Carolina,[1] where she attended high school and received a BA degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later, at Stanford University, was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction.[2] After graduating, she worked a number of odd jobs: waitress, bartender, caterer, cashier, medical transcriber, fact-checker, and ghost-writer.

"I went to UNC-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate and I studied with Doris Betts, Jill McCorkle and Robert Kirkpatrick among others. All three were great mentors to me as a young writer. Later, I got a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. My big influence there was Gilbert Sorrentino..."
—Jenny Offill, to Ellen Birkett Morris[3]

Career

Writing

Offill's first novel, Last Things, was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in the UK by Bloomsbury. It was a New York Times Notable book and a finalist for the L.A Times First Book Award. Offill's second novel, Dept. of Speculation, was published in January 2014[4] [5] [6] and was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review.[7] Dept. of Speculation has been shortlisted for the Folio Prize in the UK, the Pen/Faulkner Award and the L.A. Times Fiction Award. In 2016 Offill was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[8]

Her work has appeared in the Paris Review.[9] She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books. Offill's short fiction has appeared in Electric Literature and Significant Objects.[3]

"I have always liked compressed and fragmentary forms. I trace it back to my mind being blown by John Berryman when I was nineteen."
—Jenny Offill, about Dept. of Speculation[10]
Her third novel, Weather, was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction,[11] and in December 2020, Emily Temple of Literary Hub reported that the novel had made 13 lists of the best books of 2020.[12]

Teaching

Offill has taught in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University,[13] Columbia University and Queens University of Charlotte.[14] [15] She served as Visiting Writer at Syracuse University and Sarah Lawrence College, and as Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College and Pratt University. She is currently the Writer-in-Residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.[16]

Personal life

In 2008, Offill, 39, a writer and creative writing teacher at Brooklyn College and Columbia University, and her partner, David Hirme, 37, a Web director for Channel 13, a public television station, lived in Brooklyn with their child, Theo, 3.[17]

Offill lives in the Hudson Valley.[18]

Works

Novels

Children's books

As co-editor

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Jenny Offill: life after Dept. of Speculation – the underdog persona's not going to fly any more. Haas. Lidija. 2015-02-28. The Guardian. 2017-06-09. en-GB. 0261-3077.
  2. Web site: Jenny Offill Faculty Sarah Lawrence College . 2014-12-27 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150119212726/http://www.slc.edu/faculty/offill-jenny.html . January 19, 2015 . mdy-all .
  3. Web site: Offill's Finely Wrought Novel Satisfies. 2014-03-31. Authorlink - Writers and Readers Magazine. 2020-03-11.
  4. News: Bridled Vows . The New York Times. Roxane Gay. February 7, 2014. ...Offill still makes it seem as if the wife’s version of the marriage is story enough and, perhaps, the only story that matters. The book calls to mind another proverb, this one from Madagascar: Marriage is not a tight knot, but a slip knot..
  5. News: The Smallest Possible Disaster . April 24, 2014 . The New York Review of Books. Elaine Blair.
  6. James Wood. Mother Courage. 18 September 2014. The New Yorker. March 31, 2014. 'Dept. of Speculation' is all the more powerful because, with its scattered insights and apparently piecemeal form, it at first appears slight. Its depth and intensity make a stealthy purchase on the reader..
  7. Web site: The 10 Best Books of 2014 . Sunday Book Review . New York Times . 4 December 2014 . 14 December 2014 .
  8. Web site: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Jenny Offill. en-US. 2019-04-04.
  9. News: Magic and Dread. 18 September 2014. Paris Review. Winter 2013.
  10. Web site: Cristina Fries . The Philosophical Novel Couched in a Tale of Marriage: Q&A with Jenny Offill . . 2014-11-10 . 2020-03-11.
  11. Web site: Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist announced. 2020-04-22. Books+Publishing. en-AU. 2020-05-05.
  12. Web site: Temple. Emily. 2020-12-15. The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List. 2021-01-04. Literary Hub. en-US.
  13. Web site: Current English Course Descriptions ENG 650 M006 Forms: Long Story Short: The Art of Radical Compression; 6:30-9:15pm; Instructor: Jenny Offill - College of Arts & Sciences at Syracuse University . Thecollege.syr.edu . 2019-10-15 . 2020-03-11.
  14. Web site: Jenny Offill . Queens University of Charlotte . Queens University of Charlotte . queens.edu. 2020-03-11.
  15. Web site: Café Américain An Interview with Jenny Offill. cafemfa.com. en-US. 2017-06-09.
  16. Web site: College . Bard . Jenny Offill . 2022-08-03 . www.bard.edu . en.
  17. News: Ax the Drapes; Move the Stuff. Gregory. Beyer . The New York Times . 2008-12-12 . 2020-03-11 .
  18. Web site: Jenny Offill Exerts Herself. Daniel Lefferts. 2020-01-15. 2020-03-11.
  19. Book: 17 THINGS I'M NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYMORE Kirkus Reviews . en.
  20. Book: 11 EXPERIMENTS THAT FAILED Kirkus Reviews . en.
  21. Web site: 11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill . 2023-05-10 . www.publishersweekly.com.

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